April 29, 2012

How dare he? How dare this man, who has flirted with the England manager’s job since before it even became available, undermine our club… my club, by talking about the future of our best player, when he… this media Succubus, is unlikely to be even at the helm come the summer? So enraged am I, that I’ve done the only thing any middle-class football fan worth his salt would do; write a strongly-worded letter to the club.

April 10, 2012

Pilkington’s goal – Pilkington comes off the left flank to receive the ball in a more central area, as he and Bennett did all game. He lays off to Johnson, who tries to slide a pass through to Holt. Kaboul’s interception is blocked by Pilkington, who slips in Wilbraham as King dallies. Walker challenges, but his clearance rebounds off King into Pilkington’s path, and he finishes well.

April 8, 2012

Following on from my post this morning, our Academy beat Sparta Prague 1-0 thanks to a late Jack Munns goal, but lost out to PSV Eindhoven on penalties this afternoon in the U19 Champions Trophy in Düsseldorf.

Souleymane Coulibaly scored a penalty to put us ahead, but PSV equalised within two minutes, and the match eventually went to penalties. It seems that we lost 4-2 with Munns and Dombaxe scoring from the spot. Coulibaly hit the bar with his second penalty kick of the match, and Milos Veljkovic missed the other.

Saturday was the first day of the tournament, and we opened with a 2-0 win against New York Cosmos. Our goals came from Nabil Bentaleb, who drove home as the ball rebounded back to him, and Souleymane Coulibaly, who tapped home a Ken MvEvoy cross.

The second match didn’t go so well, and we ended up losing 2-0 to Fortuna Düsseldorf, who put in what the tournament website describes as “one of the most convincing performances so far”.

This morning we face Sparta Prague (KO 10:30 BST); if we were to win this match, we would play PSV Eindhoven (who won their group) at 14:00 BST.

Some key tournament rules:

– Matches are short – they consist of 2 x 25 minute halves.– Participating players must be born on or after 01/01/1993.– A squad consists of up to 18 players.– Four substitutions are allowed per game.

I will try to find out the full squad list, and will edit this post if I am able to do so.

EDIT: We beat Sparta Prague 1-0 thanks to a very late Jack Munns goal, and now face PSV Eindhoven at 14:00 (UK time) in the Quarter-Finals. If you are interested in following the score, log on to the tournament website at 2 and have your finger ready over the F5 key!